A judge blocked Donald Trump late Tuesday from ending an Obama-era program that shielded children, brought to the United States illegally by their parents, from deportation out of the country.

District judge William Alsup ruled in San Francisco that the administration must “maintain the Daca program on a nationwide basis”, while courts decide how to ultimately rule on the president’s order.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program has allowed nearly 800,000 immigrants to work and go to school in the US without fear of deportation since it was authorized by former president Barack Obama in 2012.

On Wednesday morning, Trump lashed out at judges based in the western ninth circuit, calling the court system “broken and unfair”.

“It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts,” he tweeted. (The circuit is not, in fact, the most reversed court.) Trump has criticized the circuit in the past, including deriding one of the federal judges who halted the implementation of his travel ban executive order.

Quick guide

What is Daca and who are the Dreamers?

Who are the Dreamers?

Dreamers are young immigrants who would qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (Daca) program, enacted under Barack Obama in 2012. Most people in the program entered the US as children and have lived in the US for years “undocumented”. Daca gave them temporary protection from deportation and work permits. Daca was only available to people younger than 31 on 15 June 2012, who arrived in the US before turning 16 and lived there continuously since June 2007. Most Dreamers are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and the largest numbers live in California, Texas, Florida and New York. Donald Trump cancelled the program in September but has also said he wants Congress to develop a program to “help” the population.

What will happen to the Dreamers?

Under the Trump administration, new applications under Daca will no longer be accepted. For those currently in the program, their legal status and other Daca-related permits (such as to work and attend college) will begin expiring in March 2018 – unless Congress passes legislation allowing a new channel for temporary or permanent legal immigration status – and Dreamers will all lose their status by March 2020.

Technically, as their statuses lapse they could be deported and sent back to countries many have no familiarity with. It is still unclear whether this would happen. Fear had been rising in the run-up to last week’s announcement. Those with work permits expiring between 5 September 2017 and 5 March 2018 will be allowed to apply for renewal by 5 October.

What does the recent ruling by Judge William Alsup mean?

In his ruling, Alsup ordered the Trump administration to restart the program, allowing Daca recipients who already qualify for the program to submit applications for renewal.

However, he said the federal government did not have to process new applications from people who had not previously received protection under the program.

When the Trump administration ended the Daca program, it allowed Daca recipients whose legal status expired on or before 5 March to renew their legal status. Roughly 22,000 recipients failed to successfully renew their legal status for various reasons.

Legal experts and immigration advocates are advising Daca recipients not to file for renewal until the administration provides more information about how it intends to comply with the ruling.

“These next days and weeks are going to create a lot of confusion on the legal front,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, which has filed a separate lawsuit against the Trump administration’s termination of Daca. Joanna Walters

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The Trump administration decided in September to rescind the Daca program, placing the fate of hundreds of thousands of the young immigrants, known as Dreamers, in the hands of Congress. The announcement prompted several states, organizations and people to file lawsuits.

The administration announced the decision on 5 September 2017 and said applicants had 30 days to respond. So while the program has not expired yet – that will happen on 5 March – the deadline had passed to renew applications.

In his ruling, Alsup wrote that previous recipients of Daca protections who failed to register by the deadline must be allowed to renew their status in the program. However, he said the federal government did not have to process new applications from people who had never before received protection under the program.

Nearly 22,000 Daca recipients did not successfully apply to renew their eligibility, according to a study by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning thinktank in Washington. The researchers estimate that on average 122 Daca recipients per day will lose their legal protections in the 181 days between 5 September 2017 and 5 March.

“In terminating Daca, the administrative record failed to address the 689,800 young people who had come to rely on Daca to live and to work in this country,” Alsup wrote.

“These individuals had submitted substantial personal identifying information to the government, paid hefty fees and planned their lives according to the dictates of Daca. The administrative record includes no consideration to the disruption a rescission would have on the lives of Daca recipients, let alone their families, employers and employees, schools and communities.”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the court decision was “outrageous, especially in light of the president’s successful bipartisan meeting with House and Senate members at the White House on the same day”.

She added: “An issue of this magnitude must go through the normal legislative process. President Trump is committed to the rule of law, and will work with members of both parties to reach a permanent solution that corrects the unconstitutional actions taken by the last administration.”

If the court order stands, it could potentially ease some of the pressure on Democrats and Republicans in Congress to find a legislative solution before the program ends.

Democrats on Wednesday hailed the ruling but urged lawmakers to continue working on a legislative fix.

“This relief, while important, is not a lasting solution,” Senator Kamala Harris of California said in a statement on Wednesday. “Congress must act immediately to provide these young people with permanent protection from deportation, which can only come through legislation. Dreamers do not deserve a life where they live in constant fear of a new court decision that could rip them away from their families”

Hours before the ruling, Trump convened a bipartisan meeting with lawmakers at the White House to discuss the fate of the Dreamers. He expressed sympathy for their plight and called on lawmakers to craft a “bill of love” that would enshrine the Daca permanently and offer the young immigrants an eventual path to US citizenship. Yet he also reiterated his demands for a border wall, a central plank of his hardline immigration platform during the 2016 presidential election and a nonstarter for Democrats.

After the meeting, a number of Democrats and Republicans in attendance said Trump conceded privately – after the cameras were turned off – that a border wall did not need to be a physical barrier from “sea to shining sea”.

But later on Tuesday, Trump appeared to revert to his initial view, tweeting: “As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval.”

The White House is also demanding that a deal include reforms to the legal migration system, ending rules that allow immigrants to sponsor relatives and the elimination of the state department’s diversity visa lottery program.

What is Daca and who are the Dreamers?

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Democrats have agreed to compromise on border security but have warned that certain demands could derail negotiations, potentially threatening a government shutdown over the issue if they withhold support from a must-pass spending bill next week.

In response, the Trump administration signaled late Tuesday that it would appeal the ruling, a step toward taking the case to the US supreme court. A spokesman for the justice department, Devin O’Malley, said the ruling does not change the administration’s position that the program “was an unlawful circumvention of Congress”.

“The justice department will continue to vigorously defend this position, and looks forward to vindicating its position in further litigation,” he added.